Job cuts hit Royal Children's

Julia Medew and Kate Hagan

About 50 jobs will be lost at the new $1 billion Royal Children's Hospital as budget cuts continue to decimate Victoria's hospital system and blow out elective surgery waiting lists.

Chief executive of the Royal Children's Hospital Christine Kilpatrick last night said 12 staff had been made redundant yesterday and that she planned to cut another 38 positions through redundancies and existing vacancies not being filled due to the loss of $3.6 million in Commonwealth funding this financial year.

A spokeswoman said last night that no clinical staff have been or would be retrenched as part of the job cuts.

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In a statement, she said the job cuts were designed to protect patient care from the impact of the Commonwealth cut, which coincides with the state government slashing $616 million from its last two health budgets over five years.

"We treat the sickest children and those with the most complex medical conditions in the country, and we have a responsibility to keep beds and theatres open and to maintain the capacity of our emergency department," she said.

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"The job losses and other measures we're taking to save $3.6 million this financial year will be disruptive and in some cases painful, but we are confident that we're taking the most responsible possible approach to meeting this unexpected budget challenge."

President of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association Stephen Parnis said the job cuts were a ''damning indictment'' on the impossible position hospitals had been put in, as state and federal politicians continued to squabble yesterday over who was responsible for cutting services and running the system.

''There is no doubt in my mind that these budget cuts which all hospitals are facing are putting patients at completely unacceptable levels of risk,'' he said.

The job cuts come as the Royal Children's Hospital faces unprecedented demand for care with scores of sick children not receiving treatment within clinically recommended times. A total of 3243 children were waiting for elective surgery at the hospital in June, the largest number of patients at any Victorian hospital.

Between March and June, only about a third of the 1561 children waiting for category two ''semi urgent'' surgery were treated within the recommended timeframe of 90 days.

Professor Kilpatrick said although she was trying to redeploy staff where possible, further cuts were likely next financial year as the hospital became ''an exceptionally lean organisation''.

Last October, the federal government said new population data meant Victoria would receive $107 million less than it expected in health funding for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 financial years.

Victorian Health Minister David Davis says he had no choice but to pass the cuts on to hospitals, which are now struggling to save millions over the next five months. As a result, more than 300 hospital beds have been closed since December and the Victorian Healthcare Association has predicted up to 750 jobs could be lost.

Yesterday, chair of the Victorian regional committee of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, Dr Robert Stunden, said he believed senior teaching doctors, scrub nurses and theatre technicians were being retrenched or moved into other positions as some hospitals cut elective surgery activity in half.

While urgent surgery would still be done within 30 days, he said people waiting for semi-urgent surgery, including hip and knee replacements, hernia repairs and gall bladder removals, could be waiting for longer than six months when they should be operated on within three.

''The cutbacks are biting hard … I have never seen morale in any health service in the world like it is in Victoria today and I've worked in five countries on four continents,'' he said.

While Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek yesterday said she would meet with Mr Davis to discuss the matter over then next week, unions representing nurses and health workers said they were preparing to rally in Treasury Gardens at 11am on February 3 to demand an end to the dispute.

The Health Services Union and Health and Community Services Union also warned that their members, which include allied health professionals, cleaners and orderlies, could strike if their jobs were threatened.

State secretary of the Australian Nursing Federation Lisa Fitzpatrick said nurses were concerned hospitals were not filling job vacancies due to the cuts, amounting to ''redundancies by stealth'' that would affect patient care.

She said many nurses who had completed a graduate year in a public hospital were not being offered ongoing employment, and hundreds of new graduates were unable to secure a position.